My story is very long and complicated. I am finally sharing my story to get help and support although I do not often feel I deserve it.
My husband and I have been married 20 years. We dated on and off for five years prior. We started dating when he was getting ready to graduate high school and I was a year younger.
We were very much in love when we were first married. We struggled with infertility for a few years and had a miscarriage before finally having our first son in 1995. He was the biggest joy to us , but we were also going through a lot of stress shortly after his birth. My husband was in the army at the time and we were living overseas. When our son was six months old we moved back to the US and moved several times those first two years . During that time , I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression . I was put on medication wich really helped. My husband got out of the army when our son turned two. We moved back to our home state and he started a new job and we built a new house. This was a very stressful time for us. We had already moved around so much. Now we were having to move in with his parents for three months because our house was being built. It was rough living with my inlaws. My husband has always had somewhat of a temper, but it seemed to escalate during that time. His mother did come to me and say that she thought my husband was being verbally abusive to me. I agreed , but never addressed it. My father had a temper growing up and maybe I just felt that it was a normal way. When we moved into our home, we had several issues that the builder was having to come into fix. I was a stay at home mom at the time and did not know anyone in my new neighborhood yet. I was very attracted to the building superviser that came to my house and helped fix it. We right off the bat had an immediate connection. I began to look forward to him coming by to fix things and also noticed that I was starting to feel alive again. I loved the attention. We talked about a lot of things. At first it seemed innocent, with the exception that I had a crush on him. I found out that he was divorced and that he and his wife had not been able to have children. I did share with him all about the struggles my husband and I had to conceive our son. I remember giving him a hug after our conversation and feeling sparks. He told me that it had been months since he had any physical contact with a female. Over the next month , our friendship grew. I found out that he too had struggled with depression and was also taking medication for it. It finally became obvious after close to a month that he was also attracted to me and we were both really liking each other. We started talking on the phone all the time during the day when my husband was at work. I got to where I was so excited for his morning calls. We eventually had our first of 5-6 phone sex calls. After the first one, I did feel dirty. I did not even get myself off, it was me just pleasing him. I pretended to get off. Over the next 8 month we had an on again off again emotional affair. As I mentioned before we had phone sex 5-6 times. The only physical contact we had was the hug I gave him a few weeks after we first met. We never had any other physical contact. We flirted and I know our body language was very suggestive,, but that is as far as it went. I was very confused during that time. While I liked the attention I got from my AP, I really did still love my husband. Over the next eight months, the affair was on and off. I would push my AP away and then a few weeks would go by and then I would pull him back in when I had a fight with my husband. As I am typing this, I see just how selfish I really was! Finally after 8 Months, I ended it for good. I was exhausted emotionally and I really did want to focus on my family. I started to see this guy as a home wrecker. (I know I sound like a hypocrite). My husband and I really wanted another child and had actually been having unprotected sex for a year without getting pregnant . Shortly after I ended the affair for good, I found out I was pregnant. I was actually relieved that I could move forward and focus on us. It sounds so messed up I know. Unfortunately I had a miscarriage a few months later. We were disappointed and part of me felt like It was Gods punishment for my affair. After that I wanted to really try harder to make things work. I really was focused on my husband and did not look back at my AP. I got pregnant five months later and was so wanting this baby and my marriage to work. I was in a better spot. I had a brief run in with AP in my neighborhood. He drove by and saw me outside. He had heard from one of my neighbors that I was pregnant back in the winter and was confused because it was now summer and I did not look pregnant. I told him about the miscarriage and did not tell him about the new pregnancy. I had no feelings for him anymore. I remember looking at him and thinking that he would never be anything close to the man I was married to. Who was I to judge? I was a cheater!
I delivered my second son prematurely at 24weeks gestation. He weighed 1 lb 11oz at birth. We were told that his chance if survival was 50%. Once again, I blamed my affair for my sons early birth. My baby did survive and came home to us three months later. Shortly after my son came home, my AP called. I had not spoken to him since the day he drove by my house and I was outside. I told him about my new son and to never call me again. My AP was very upset and I just wanted to get off the phone with him as fast as I could. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.
Fast forward 15 years and one more child later. If was the best if times and the worst of times during those years. We moved to a big house, and when I became pregnant with my daughter, I spent 6 months on complete bed rest. Three of those months were in the hospital. My husband was such a saint during that time . I feel bad saying this, but I put my affair in a file cabinet in my brain and never opened it up. I was fully into my family during this time.
A couple years later my son was diagnosed with cancer. He is now going on six years clear of cancer; but at the time it was surgeries, dr visits, radiation,etc. somewhere along the way I think I lost myself. I gained weight and Just did not try to look nice. My husband was very unhappy about it. He did try at times to be careful about talking to me about my weight. I would go on and off diets and lose and gain the same 20l lbs. My husband started to become very angry and was very mean to me about my weight. He even threatened to leave me if I did not loose weight. I was overweight yes, but I was not as huge as he makes it sound like I was. I never got beyond a size 14 at my fattest. He was also very controlling in other areas. I felt like I had two husbands. The nice one and the mean one.
Last year I started running . My husband is a huge runner and has always tried to get me to start. I decided on my own to do this. I did loose weight, and I gained a whole lot of self confidence. Running changed my life in so many positive ways! I was soon training for my first half marathon. My husband was very proud of me! Our sex life was becoming amazing and we were getting to a good spot, EXCEPT, his temper. This has been ongoing for our entire marriage. He even started yelling at our kids. I had asked him to get help for anger management, but that did not happen. He was still very critical of my weight and made comments about what I ate all the time. I felt like he was not attracted to me. For most of our marriage, he has worried about me gaining weight. After running and loosing close to 20lbs, he never really said many positive things about my weight. He did , however, remind me often that I still had a ways to go to reach the right BMI! He also asked me when I was going to hurry up and loose the last bit of weight that I had to loose. Here I was wearing clothes that wre 4 sizes smaller then the year before! As I said before, I just wanted to hear something positive for a change without having to ask for it.
Ok, now this leads up to my recent transgretions and getting caught.
I found a website called The Expirience Project. I was looking up stories on husbands with anger problems and found this site to be a wealth of story sharing on everything you can posibly imagine! I love to read about other people's lives and was genuinely fascinated by all the stories. They had stories for everything! I even found some really great people who struggled with weight gain and found running and it changed there lives completely! I eventually found myself looking at stories that were sexual in nature. It turned me on to read some of these stories. I found out you have to join the website to be able to read most of these stories, so I did. I did not realize the trap of desire I was about to get myself into. Before I knew it , I had all these new friends and I was also able to look at men's profiles who had nude photos on them. I noticed that people would comment on these pictures and before I knew it, I had posted some nude ones of myself. I really was curios to see what other men thought of my nude body. I always felt like my husband was repulsed by my nude body. Before long, I had strange men reaching out to me and it all went down hill from there. I got a Skype account and Yahoo messanger and I was skyping nude with strangers and getting each other off. How did I let this get so far out of control ??? I still don't know!
My husband found out three weeks into it. He is a brilliant IT guy and found out about everything! He was not at all snooping. In fact , he never in a million years would have placed me as a cheater. He stumbled across two nude photos on our shared photo stream that I carelessly forgot to delete. I was busted. When I showed him my EP account he read most of my correspondences that I had sharerd with the other men. I had told one of the men about my affair 15 years ago and he read it! I tried to deny it at first which only made things worse . This all happened last month on July 25. We are currently seeing a MC and trying to work through this. It has been a huge struggle and my husband is in so much pain right now! Pain that I caused him!!! I have so much self hatred right now that it is so hard for me to show him the love he deserves. I want my marriage to work more than anything! I also want to find out why I would let myself do what I did. I do not ever want to hurt my husband like this ever again. He is a great man. Sure he has a temper, but he in no way deserved this! I am so upset with the damage that I have caused to my family. I only hope that in time, he will be able to forgive me and trust me. I will be posting more on this forum,but wanted to get my story out and hope that we can all support one another as we try to pick up the shattered pieces of our true love that we have just destroyed!
[This message edited by Imessedup97 at 4:35 PM, August 19th (Monday)]
